For anyone with an interest in the history of clothing, dress, textiles, lace and embroidery, paricularly of the early modern period, 1550-1750

Thursday, 26 April 2012

Fans of the 16th and 17th centuries

Although fans were known from antiquity, and were used in
the middle ages in religious ceremonies to keep flies away from the communion,
it is only in the sixteenth century that they start to be a fashionable
accessory. Fans come in two types, fixed and folding. The folding fan does not
appear in Europe until relatively late apparently appearing sometime in the mid
16th century. According to Anne Houget (2012) they were brought
from Japan to Europe by the Portuguese around 1540.During the 16th and 17th centuries fans of
both types can be seen in portraits. Hollar’s twenty six plates of
Englishwomen, the Ornatus Muliebris of 1640, has four of the figures carrying
fans, two fixed and two folding, plus one lady who appears to be carrying a
fixed fan with a looking glass in the handle. The folding fan gradually took over from the
fixed fan until, at the end of the 17th century, the fixed fan had almost
completely disappeared. (Alexander,
2002)(Hart, 1998) Links to online examples appear throughout this article.

The earlier fixed fans either consisted of a solid fan on a
handle, or of a handle into which feathers, or something similar, could be
inserted. For example the feather fan in this 1621 portrait of Lady Lister by Marcus Geeraerts (love the see through apron too), shows
clearly the fan handle with the feathers inserted, hanging from her girdle. Very
few of these handles still exist, the Victoria and Albert Museum has a Venetian
fan handle
of about 1550 of brass gilt in an openwork design. There are several portraits
of Queen Elizabeth carrying this type of fan, the handle richly jewelled, and
there are many in the Stowe inventory of her clothing. One of the most
elaborate in her collection was “firste one fanne of white feathers with a
handle of golde garnished with fower faire diamonds twoe faire rubies, twoe
small diamonds and seaven rocke rubies and one emerode”; it was kept in a case
of black velvet. White were not the only feathers used, Elizabeth also had fans
of black feathers, carnation, white and orange feathers, one described as
having painted feathers, and one of the “feathers of the Birde of Paradise and
other colored feathers”.(Arnold, 1988)

These feather fans were status symbols, and John Aubrey at
the end of the century wrote of them. “The Gentlewoman then had prodigious
Fannes, as is to be seen in the old pictures, like that instrument which is
used to drive feathers: it had a handle of at least half a yard long; with
these the daughters were corrected oftentimes. Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief
Justice, rode the circuit with just such a fan; Mr Dugdale sawe it, who told me
of it. The Earl of Manchester used also a fan. But fathers and mothers slash'd
their daughters in the time of that besome discipline when they were perfect
women.” Interestingly by the middle of the 17thcentury Helene
Alexander considers that the fixed fan was becoming associated more with the
bourgeoisie, while the folding fan was associated with upper classes.

Folding fans come in two types, those where the sticks
themselves form the fan, these are known as brise fans, and those where a fan
leaf is attached to the sticks. Where there is a fan leaf attached to the
sticks, it can be made from vellum, chicken skin,or paper, anything that can be
decorated, folded and attached to the sticks. The sticks themselves, including
the outmost sticks, which are known as guards because the protect the fan leaf
when the fan is shut, can be made from ivory, wood, or any other material that
can be carved, painted or otherwise decorated.

The earliest fan in the V&A collection is a brise fan dating from
the 1620s. I am amazed it has survived as it is described as “cut straw applied
to silk covered cardboard, reinforced with metal rods, decorated with gold
paper and silk.”

Sometimes the leaf can be cut (decoupe) in various ways.
Diane Cecil, painted in 1614 by William Larkin, is carrying a folding fan which
may well be decoupe fan, the portrait is in the Suffolk Collection at Kenwood
House. There is a superb example of a decoupe fan dating from 1590-1600 in the Museum
of Fine Arts Boston, it looks like lace, but is actually cut skin.

The mica fan of about 1665 in the Fitzwilliam
Museum is one of only four of this type to survive. Three bands of mica
panels have been painted with figures and mounted on a paper fan leaf. The leaf
has then been mounted on ivory sticks. Another of these fans, this one possibly
Dutch, is in the Museum
of Fine Arts Boston, but most of its mica inserts are missing.

Leaves of fans sometimes survive unmounted, for example
there is a leaf in the Museum
of London that dates from 1686 and depicts the Lord Mayor of London’s
procession.

By the late 17thcentury folding fans
appear to have taken over almost completely. In France in1678 a guild, the
Association de Eventaillistes, had been formed producing fans similar to this French
example of c.1670-1680 in the V&A
collection . The reverse of the fan often had a different picture to that
the front, as in the fan of c.1700 in the Fitzwilliam
Museum, which depicts the Rape of the Sabine women, from a painting by Pietro
da Cortona of between 1626 and 1631 on one side, and a mixture of flowers and
birds and putti on the other.

Fans are shown being sold in the wonderful 1636 etching by
Abraham Bosse of a shop in the La Galerie du Palais in Paris. The rear centre shows
folding fans displayed opened out, while in the centre front a gentleman
displays a fan to a lady.